


échangez moi

by smalltokens



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Bodyswap, Identity Reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-14 10:10:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9176215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smalltokens/pseuds/smalltokens
Summary: Do you ever write a bunch of a thing and realize partway through that it's basically just a plothole-riddled shitpost that takes itself too seriously and suddenly you don't know how to keep writing it?Anyway here's the bodyswap nobody asked for.





	

Adrien awoke to a startling amount of pink.

The room was so rife with it that he didn't notice for a few disoriented seconds that it even was a room - a bedroom, and that he was on a loft bed that put him eye-level with mostly ceiling and sweeping wooden beam architecture. Soft morning light gleamed in his eye and Adrien squinted up to see there was a small square skylight right above him. His brain felt foggy and muddled but vaguely Adrien remembered awkwardly gaming in a one Marinette Dupain-Cheng's home and that her room had had such features. Realizing this did not answer how he got here or solve his headache or really close any doors to any part of his vast confusion.

Adrien went to shuffle down the ladder from the bed to the main floor of the room and immediately he groaned. His head throbbed; it felt like it wanted to throw up his brains in a gelatinous heap on the floor. His tongue felt like sandpaper in his mouth. Adrien wondered vaguely if he'd been drugged. Had he been kidnapped? By Marinette? It didn't seem likely, but neither did it seem likely that he'd wake up tangled in these pretty pink pastel sheets.

If she had kidnapped him, she didn't seem to have done a very good job of it, past the part where he couldn't have told his father from Mr. Pigeon in this state. He had figured out where he was, his hands and feet weren't even zip-tied, and she'd left him alone unsupervised to plan his escape.

Okay, fine, he didn't seriously think Marinette of all people had drugged him and he probably needed to stop watching spy movies with Nino, but in all seriousness, he'd have to find her and sort out exactly why he couldn't seem to orient himself or remember when he'd gotten here.

Shifting as slowly and smoothly as he could manage, Adrien went to try again for the ladder, but something felt off again. Not the ache of his head, but something weird about just how he moved. It felt different. It felt unbalanced - like his center of gravity was not where it was supposed to be, like the practiced control he'd aggregated over years of fencing and modelling had been drained, just a bit, out of his limbs. Adrien frowned and looked down at himself.

Then immediately snapped his head back up.

He did not remember owning a threadbare pink tee-shirt with the faded image of a cartoon kitten on it. He did not remember having pink cotton capris. He did NOT remember his body having those curves.

"Plagg, something's wrong." His voice was higher than it should have been.

There wasn't any answer and another surge of panic shot through him. Adrien glanced down at his right hand --

Well, not _his_ , because it was smaller than he was used to seeing on himself, the fingers femininely tapered and the nails slightly longer. But his ring was still there, if now just a tad loose. Adrien let out a sigh of relief, then peeked around the mattress nervously. His kwami was snoring on the head of a large cat pillow stretched out around the head of the bed.

"Plagg!" Adrien poked the little black cat, who snorted himself awake and blinked sleepily at him. He looked lazily from Adrien's - no, Marinette's face, to the ring, then back to Marinette's face again, as a slow smile crept up his own. Then he burst out laughing.

"Plagg!!" Adrien pleaded, scooping him up in his disturbingly dainty hands. "Plagg, help, what's going on?!"

Plagg struggled to catch his breath and reply, but as soon as he slowed and looked at Adrien again, he doubled over in laughter.

" _Plagg_ ," Adrien started to hiss, but he heard a creaking and he shoved Plagg under the cat pillow as the trapdoor on the floor opened up. Marinette's dad stuck his head up into the room.

"How's my little flour this morning?" he boomed cheerily. Adrien scrambled back to the back corner of the bed, as if Mr. Dupain-Cheng would take one look at him and know instantly he was an imposter.

"F-fine! Good morning, uh, P-pere!" he called back. There was a brief beat of silence. Nice going, Adrien, he thought, now you have to explain who you are and why you're in his daughter - oh god, don't say it like that out loud-

"I just came up to let you know you should be off to school soon. No more late notices, okay, honey?" Thankfully, Marinette's dad didn't wait for a reply and Adrien heard the gentle thump of the trapdoor falling back in place. He exhaled the breath he'd been holding and flopped back on the cat pillow (sending Plagg flying up into the air, squawking, as served him right for being absolutely zero help at all).

Time to take stock of the situation. He was trapped in his classmate Marinette's body. (He could have been illusioned to look like her, he supposed, but why would that necessarily place him in her room? But then why would Marinette have his ring? Neither really made sense to him, but 'get back to my own body!' was a good, simple driving thought.) That wasn't itself too mysterious; magical hijinkery just screamed 'akuma'. "HAWKMOTH WAS HERE AND HE FUCKED UP YOUR SHIT." Nothing new. What bothered him was that he couldn't remember any akuma. Adrien squinted up out the skylight. If he thought really hard - hard enough his still-aching head protested - he could vaguely recall flashes of magenta light, of Ladybug's eyes narrowed in determination as she nodded at him to enact some secret plan between them. He could remember fumbling for his baton. But none of those images held any detail that could clue him into what had actually happened, or even if those were real memories or if his brain had cobbled them together from times they'd fought other akuma. None of them featured Marinette or any hint about why he'd turned into her of all the people in Paris.

The other question was where was Marinette? He knew the answer he certainly hoped for: best outcome, she was waking up confused and probably more than a little panicked in his own bed in the Agreste mansion. Yes, that's what was happening. Adrien didn't want to think about the possibility that he'd somehow replaced his classmate in her own body and that her soul, her consciousness or whatever, was who-knows-where.

He scrunched up his face and rubbed his eyes with his palms. No, she was definitely in his body and she was okay and they could definitely switch back. That meant he had to go find her. Him. Himself?

"Plagg, what the hell are pronouns."

He got no response but giggling, which was expected, so Adrien hoisted himself up and slid over the sheets, now thoroughly rumpled, to the ladder. At least his headache was receding from "ungodly" to "manageable". He had no idea how he'd get through the day pretending to be Marinette if he'd had to deal with wanting to claw out his skull at the same time. As it was, after making it to the main floor and fumbling uncomfortably through the drawers on Marinette's vanity, he found a bottle of painkillers. He popped one, a little guiltily, but technically it was Marinette's medicine and he was in Marinette's body, so really he was saving her some pain for when they finally switched back, right?

There were so many ethical questions here Adrien did not want to deal with. He hesitantly grabbed her backpack while looking at as few things in the room as he could, hoping Marinette had already loaded it up with all the homework she'd need for today. After a moment of hesitant deliberation, he shoved the painkillers in the bag as well. Plagg, when he finally zipped over as Adrien opened the trapdoor, snorted and ducked into a side pocket of the backpack. Adrien ducked downstairs as quietly as he could, and rounded the corner into the blue stairway without so much as looking into the living room or kitchen.

"Have fun at school, Marinette!" he heard her mom's voice call after him, making him wince guiltily.

"Will do! Gotta go, can't be late!" he said quickly and bolted from the house as fast he could.

Unused to going through this part of Paris on street-level on foot, Adrien ran two blocks before he realized he should be going in the opposite direction.

\---

Getting to his seat was a relief, like he'd passed some test by making it all the way to school unaccosted for being Fake Marinette, but all of it vaporized when he heard someone clear their throat in front of them and looked up to see Alya smirking at him, one eyebrow cocked at him curiously.

"So what, you finally decided to get bold with Adrien today? Hoping he's just gonna walk in and sit on your lap?" She looked Adrien up and down and her smirk cracked into a grin. "I'm not knocking your plan, but maybe you should have dressed up a bit for it, hon?"

Adrien sputtered and looked around. He'd been so glad to make it to school in one piece that he'd simply thrown himself down in his own seat, in the front row. Where Marinette - whom he _was_ today, he reminded himself - should not be sitting. What's more, he was still in the pink kitten tee-shirt and pants combo that he suddenly suspected was a pair of pajamas.

"Alya! I, uh! I mean, I was in such a rush this morning! I must have completely spaced out, oh gosh," Adrien fumbled. He jerked himself out of his seat and took the chair immediately behind in Marinette's proper place next to Alya. The reporter girl, for her part, slid into her own seat and just smiled knowingly at her friend. (Or maybe unknowingly at a friend who was not the friend she thought she was smiling knowingly at and oh god this was already too messy, Adrien thought.)

"Hey, at least you're here early for once, girl. Color me impressed!"

It was true, he was uncharacteristically (for Marinette) early for class. The other students were only just now beginning to trickle in. Chloe, when she arrived with Sabrina on her heels, gave him a once-over and smirked. He could practically see her loading up all kinds of nasty comments into her arsenal. _I'm so sorry, Marinette_ , he pleaded silently. He was going to need a way to make it up to her for the onslaught of teasing Chloe would unleash on her for days because of his mistake. Luckily, Nathanael and Kim both brushed their way past Chloe, forcing her to sidestep with an indignant huff and eventually just sit down in her place, eying Adrien but apparently content to save her ridicule until later.

Adrien quickly turned away, anyway, first to avoid eye contact with her and then actually perking up when Nino came in the room. He watched his friend look at his empty seat and raise his eyebrows before sitting down in his own. Adrien wanted so badly to greet him but would it be weird? He couldn't explain what had happened; he had no idea if anyone else had been swapped by an akuma that he didn't even know for sure really existed. (Maybe Ladybug and someone in her life if this was the work of an akuma, but Ladybug was rather more strategic in her advances on their enemies than he was, so as far as Adrien was concerned and hopeful, she might have even been affected.) Nino had never really mentioned what his relationship with Marinette was like. Adrien knew, of course, about the crush, but that had never come up again after Nino had started some...thing with Alya, which he also didn't talk about very much except to occasionally reference outings with her that Adrien never seemed to know about beforehand nor could he seem to ever catch them on.

He was saved a potentially weird greeting to his best bro by an elbow to his ribs. Adrien glanced at Alya, who winked at him and nodded to the classroom door.

He looked over and saw himself. He watched his own eyes snap on him and grow perfectly round and freeze. In fact, the Adrien in the threshold didn't move at all until Alix appeared behind him, huffed impatient when she realized he wasn't moving, and then pinched his sides when he still didn't budge. Now Adrien had no doubt in his mind that it was definitely Marinette in his body; she jumped nearly a foot in the air with a yelp and did a panicked flailing dance that was so characteristic of her that it was immediately an unalterable fact.

Adrien smiled nervously at her and gave a little wave. He watched his face - watched Marinette immediately turn red and dash to sit down. She must fallen prey to the same mistake of muscle memory that he had, because instead of taking Adrien's seat, she took an extra step up to go to her own before stopping abruptly, eyes wide, and turning on her heels. She spun too fast, tripped on her own legs, and fell in a heap on the floor.

Nino stared at her. "Dude, you alright?" Quickly followed by, "Oh god, why do you smell like a locker room?"

"Yes!! Yes, I'm fine, Nino, thankyouforasking, how are you today!" Marinette said, a little loudly, as she scrambled to right herself in the appropriate seat. Adrien hadn't known his own face could turn that color of red, but he did catch a baffling waft of a very strong, very musty spray-on deodorant.

He felt a hand on his elbow; Alya was looking at him with raised eyebrows and Adrien realized he'd started to stand up. Lowering himself slowly back into Marinette's seat, he shot her a sheepish smile, to which Alya smirked and shook her head. He had no idea what that meant but he had no time to parse it out. Ms. Bustier had walked in and was smiling kindly at Marinette as she very purposefully dug out Adrien's school things and ignored Chloe's coos of "Adrichou~ Let me kiss it better, babe."

Adrien hesitantly reached for Marinette's backpack again. Plagg was peeking out at him with gleaming green eyes, shaking with stifled laughter. After withdrawing a notebook with a cute purple chevron pattern and carefully lettered "LITTÉRATURE" on the front, he kicked the bag just hard enough that he heard a muffled "wah!".

Marinette, Adrien decided, was some kind of coded creature. For all the neat labeling on the front of the notebook, her handwriting inside was atrocious. A page would begin decently legibly, maybe even a color-coded table here or there with certain key words highlighted, but it was apparently that she would lose focus and begin to doodle or begin to doze off, as the sinking and increasingly scribbled lines attested to, only to snap back to focus in the middle of a sentence. She had a habit of jotting down a few words with very little context, and drawing arrows to, presumably, connect them back to a previous thought. Adrien couldn't figure out half the relationships Marinette had apparently decided to indicate as important.

Either she was some kind of genius, or she was definitely struggling in this class, he concluded.

He dutifully ignored his own name sketched out in the margins of some pages, gone over so many times that they left impressions on the next page.

In front of him, Marinette could not seem to decide whether she wanted to completely avoid his eye and furiously take notes (he hoped better than she took in her own notebook), or if she wanted to turn around and steal glances at him, still with huge disbelieving eyes, with absolutely no stealth whatsoever. Ms. Bustier called her attention back to the front three times and then gently chided her on the fourth. Adrien's heart stomach flipped nervously. Please pay attention, he silently begged Marinette. Her reaction was completely understandable, of course, but if his father heard he'd been distracted or inattentive to his schoolwork...well, Adrien didn't think he'd be able to excuse himself with a "sorry, Father, I literally wasn't myself today."

As soon as the bell rang, Marinette hopped out of her seat like it was on fire and Adrien had to run to catch her, leaving both Alya and Nino looking at each other with respectively excited and confused looks on their faces. He caught her by the forearm - his hands were so small now, they barely encircled her wrist - and she squeaked at a pitch he would have been content not knowing his vocal cords could achieve.

"Adrien," he greeted her cheerily with a very stiff smile, which he forced into something a little softer and less unnerving when she flushed in response. "Why don't we go get lunch together? We could walk around campus...and talk?"

She stared at him and for a moment Adrien was afraid she was going to panic and run away but then Marinette nodded energetically, sending blonde locks bouncing from the force of it. "Y-yeah. Okay, yeah. We talk - I mean, we can need to -- I mean, yeah, we should talk."

Loosening his grip now that he was more sure she wasn't going to tear away from him but still holding rather firmly, Adrien started to lead her toward the basketball court, only to have her shift in his grip - breaking out with a surprisingly dextrous ease - and catch his wrist instead, pulling in the opposite direction. "There - There'll be less people in the library. No food allowed, so nobody's in there over lunch."

Adrien mulled this over, then grinned. "Good idea."

\--

Anyone passing by might have thought they were actually studying, neither of them said anything for so long. Adrien had hastily plopped open Marinette's history book on the table in an effort to not get them evicted from the library for goofing off, but he couldn't seem to tear his eyes from the page in front of him, though he wasn't reading a single word. He could feel Marinette's gaze boring into him through his own petrified green eyes.

Finally, Adrien cleared his throat. "So...Marinette."

She jumped. "A-Adrien."

Adrien tried his best to smile comfortingly at her, but it was so much weirder when he wasn't looking at Marinette. There was only his own face adamantly avoiding his eye and - when he inevitably caught it anyway when she failed to resist the urge to glance at him - turning an embarrassed pink. Not that Adrien could blame her. He'd dealt with strange situations because of akumas (like this, presumably) before, but being in someone else's body was a whole new level of awkward. Having to lie to - avoid? - her parents, to Alya, was awkward. Having her have to lie to Nathalie and his father was -

Something in Adrien died a little at the thought that Marinette might have had to talk to his father this morning. It was unlikely - Adrien could go days without a sign from his father, except maybe a note passed on through Nathalie - but she didn't deserve to be subjected to such scrutiny over his attire, his schoolwork, his extracurriculars, his modelling, his attitude - any number of subjects in which Adrien could fail in his father's eyes.

(He wondered, more than a little bitterly, if his father had been there if he would even have noticed a difference.)

Really, his only consolation that she hadn't met with his father was that Nino was right; she stunk like she'd dunked herself in body spray. His father would never have let him leave the house so inelegantly put together, even by scent. Nathalie would often give Adrien a once-over to make sure he'd put on pants and wasn't completely shaming the Agreste name, but generally did not pay as much attention to his public presentation as much as Gabriel.

"I didn't realize I needed that kind of B.O. coverage, Marinette," he said finally, cracking half a smile to let her know he was joking, kind of.

She looked horrified. "No! No, you don't you smell amazing - I mean I want to smell like you - I mean! I want to smell you! No oh my god I'm sorry." She burned bright red and buried her face in her hands. "No, what I mean is-!" he heard, muffled through her fingers. "I'm sorry, I tried to come to school like - like- " - she gestured at him, presumably at his p.j. ensemble - "but that clipboard lady turned me around and told me to go shower and get dressed and I couldn't SHOWER oh my god but I figured I had to put on new clothes if I wanted to come to school and keep your attendence up and also find you and talk to you maybe and I promise, Adrien, I promise I didn't peek I just shut my eyes and didn't look no matter how much I wanted to - I mean! I didn't want to, not that anyone wouldn't want to look at you in your under- I mean oh my god I'm sorry I just didn't want anyone to think you hadn't bathed please don't hate me!"

When her ramble came to a halt, she peeked at him through her fingers; though he could feel his own face warming as well, there wasn't much Adrien could do except give her a kindly smile.

"That's, uh - It's okay, I understand. There's extenuating circumstances," he mumbled, raising his eyebrows at her meaningfully. "I mean, I definitely - I didn't, uh. Anything...either." This was the worst conversation he'd had in his life. "I mean obviously I didn't, I'm wearing your pajamas, I mean you are but I am. Uh. I'm sorry about that, by the way," he added hastily. "I'm sure you could probably pull it off as a new fashion trend if it was actually you doing it, but I, uh - " God, now he was the one rambling. Adrien shook his head as if a good jostle would shift the right thoughts back into place.

She giggled at him. It wasn't nearly as cute a sound coming from his vocal cords as it would have been from her own but the fact of it was enough that Adrien felt a small wash of relief. A little of the tension in the room ghosted away.

"I have no idea what's going on," he admitted, leaning toward her as he lowered his voice. "I just...woke up this morning in your room like this. I don't really remember yesterday, either?"

Marinette nodded slowly. "Y-yeah. I don't remember either, I just woke up with you. I mean, as you. Being you." Her lips pressed into an uncertain sort of frown. "I think it must have been an akuma, right? I don't - I don't remember either, though. All I have is this huge headache," she admitted, dropping her head slightly.

Adrien reached down for her backpack and, gently pushing Plagg back down into the pocket with his finger when the kwami opened his mouth for what Adrien assumed was going to be a hissed complaint about being here too long without sufficient supply of cheese, retrieved the bottle of painkillers he'd nabbed from her vanity this morning. He held them out to Marinette, who raised her eyebrows and snatched the bottle with a flash of a grateful smile before she squinted at him suspiciously.

He held up his hands apologetically. "I didn't snoop, I promise, I just didn't think I could, uh, get through the day with my head throbbing, too."

A beat while she considered this, then she relaxed a little. "Okay. So our heads hurt and no memories. I guess that's something...? A clue? Or just a side-effect of traumatic brain-switching?" Marinette frowned. "Should we be worried about that? Amnesia seems pretty serious."

"Ladybug should be able to fix it, if it's akuma-caused," he pointed out.

Though she nodded, she kept her (his) mouth puckered uncertainly. "I don't know. I mean, she should... I mean, I assume, from what I know from Alya's videos, it seems like her power would be able to, but..." She bit her lip nervously. "As far as we know, no one else is switched like this. I mean, no one seems worried about an akuma on the loose. What if Ladybug and Chat Noir already took care of it but something went wrong and we didn't get put back to normal?"

That was a very distressing thought. "We don't know that no one else is switched," he said slowly, reassuringly. "We've both been doing our best not to be noticed as out of place, right? Others might be doing the same." Although that was something to keep in mind. Not everyone would be able to or even want to keep their cool about being suddenly and inexplicably - if the pattern held true and they also had no memory of the attack - switched with another person. It seemed like a longshot, but if there was some connection with who had been switched (and maybe where they had gone the previous day?), he might be able to piece together where the akuma had struck, what it was, and what it wanted. Maybe even where it had gone.  "Probably they -"

From outside, something thundered and the library shook around them; books flung from the shelves around them in a hailstorm of pages as the lights flickered. Adrien moved without thinking to put himself between the falling encyclopedias and Marinette, though she was taller than he at the moment and he didn't have much self to use as a shield. Instead, Marinette yanked his shirt, pulling them both out of their chairs and rolling to the floor as above them bookshelves creaked and shifted and tipped as whatever was thundering and shaking outside boomed, louder and closer. _They're going to fall on us_ , he realized, looking around at the maze of shelves that suddenly seemed more like a deathtrap than a library.

But though he braced himself for impact, the crash never came and he cracked open an eye to see that Marinette, in all her cleverness, had pulled them just under two parallel bookshelves whose weights had been caught and balanced against one another. The two of them were safe in the negative space between.

Adrien turned to look at Marinette with wide, grateful eyes, but she just looked him over quickly - presumably to see if he was injured - and then turned to look with wide eyes at the library doors.

Or at where there should have been library doors and instead was a heap of splintered wood and settling dust, a mess of what had once been bookshelf and wall.

"I think we're trapped," said Marinette so softly that Adrien almost didn't hear. He didn't want to agree, but there was no way they could dig through the sheer volume of rubble between them and the outside. Still, you couldn't cage a cat against its will. Adrien heard a crunch underfoot and, realizing it was glass, glanced up, evaluating.

Marinette followed his gaze to the shattered window and hummed nervously. "It's - it's too far. Even if the stairs to the second level weren't-" _completely obliterated_ , she indicated with a gesture at the heap where the flight should have been, " - the window still would be too high to reach. And the shelves are too heavy to move, even with both of us." She sounded so incredibly frustrated, and Adrien couldn't blame her. He was sure she just wanted to get out and get somewhere safe, and he - he was yelling in his head because that distance would be kitten's play if he had his baton and cat-like jumping prowess. But Marinette was right next to him.

Outside, the thundering akuma - for what else could it be - must have moved past them, because the quakes under their feet had become shallow tremors that jostled their balance every few seconds but didn't threaten to upheave any more architecture. And they had begun to hear the heart-wrenching sound of screams.

Adrien groaned. He couldn't wait, he couldn't just let people get hurt or let Ladybug fight alone just because of his secret identity. He stole a glance at Marinette. Her eyes were worried and round as saucers and they darted anxiously between him and the akuma.

"Marinette," he said quietly but the urgency in his voice must have carried through the panic because her eyes snapped on him. "I need to go. This is really important - can you promise me you won't tell anyone what you're about to see?"

Her brows furrowed and lips parted in confusion but she nodded slowly. Adrien flashed a nervous smile but nodded back. Hero time.

"Plagg, transform me!"

 

...Nothing happened, except Marinette's eyes had grown even wider than before, threatening to bug out of her face entirely.

Trying to shut out the sound of his heartbeat in his ears, Adrien nudged Plagg in his bag with his toe. "Plagg? C'mon!"

"It's not me, kid!" The kwami flew out to meet Adrien's eyes. In the background, Marinette sputtered at the sight of the little creature but Adrien didn't have time to explain to her, he needed to go. "You're not Adrien right now, remember? You have the ring but you," Plagg gestured at Adrien, in Marinette's body, "-are not who it was chosen for."

Adrien felt like his stomach was going to drop out of his body. "Then...I can't...?"

"S-switch me."

Both Adrien and Plagg jerked around to see Marinette staring at them, her shocked expression traded for something he couldn't quite decipher, vulnerable and yet set in steel. Flushed and raw, like something powerful unearthed "What?"

"Switch me," she said again, more confidently, and she reached up to remove her earrings.

It was Adrien's turn to stare. He hadn't even noticed she'd been wearing earrings; in fact, he saw now that she'd styled his hair down to hide his ears, like how it fell to cover them when he was Chat Noir. She hesitated slightly before unclipping them and holding them out to him in her hand.

He didn't take them at first. He didn't think he could if he wanted to; his body felt locked in place as he stared at his classmate, because he recognized those earrings. Those were famous earrings. He had fought to protect those earrings and the girl who wore them.

"Marinette?"

"Ch-Chat Noir." Her voice wobbled, but he could hear something of that Ladybug resolve in the way she said his name, even if it was in his own voice.

"Ladybug," he breathed and it felt like all his insides had turned to yogurt and were spilling out of him in the most knee-weakening bewilderment and relief he had ever felt in his life. His face split open in a grin. "My Lady!"

He scooped her up by the waist, making her let out another un-Adrien squeak, mildly surprised by how easy it was considering she was a bit taller and some pounds heavier than he was at the moment. Must be that Ladybug superheroine strength, he reasoned and felt all over like his heart was going to explode.

"Adrien! There's an akuma!" She'd gone completely red in the face but her expression was set in determination, with just a hint of an unsure smile tugging at the sides of her mouth. Adrien reluctantly put her down as she rested her hands on his shoulders to stabilize herself.

"Right. We should go fight it. Because you're Ladybug," he said, locking his eyes on hers and grinning his favorite Chat Noir grin.

Marinette had a strange sort of smile as she shook her head. "Not right now, I'm not." She pressed the earrings into his hand. "You are."

His good feelings dissipated. "I don't, I mean, Marinette, I can't be - I don't know how to-" But she was busy unfurling his hand so she could slide the ring off his slender fingers and slip it on her own. He watched something change on her face as the ring returned home; some inner life in her - him - brightened, sparked a superhero confidence that looked right.

Without the ring his hand felt exposed and cold as he uneasily clipped on the earrings but once they were in place, the world felt a little more stable, like it had been barely noticably akilter. From Adrien's schoolbag, right in the same pocket Plagg preferred, a large red head with black spots and enormous blue eyes popped out. The ladybug kwami eyed him carefully then looked at Marinette and nodded. (Adrien hoped that was a good sign.)  
Marinette nodded back, and supplied to Adrien, "This is Tikki."

Tikki didn't look any more at ease than Plagg that her miraculous was in the right-but-wrong-but-right hands/ears, but Marinette was smiling at him. It was his own face, which didn't exactly instill a lot of comfort, but he could see Marinette - Ladybug - in it, and she was looking at him like she had all the confidence in the world in him. There was a good chance she was faking it so they could go out and get the job done, but, regardless, Adrien took a deep breath and flashed her a grin like he was wearing his own black mask and cat ears.

" _Tikki, transform me_."

**Author's Note:**

> Some notes:  
> \- No I have no idea why their switch kept their Miraculouses or how it worked at all I just wanted this contrived reveal scene I'm sorry if you thought I was going to pull something clever  
> \- I kind of really want to do the fight scene with them switched but that will be for another day sorry sorry 
> 
> more things I didn't write:   
> ["Wow, I weigh nothing at all," he tried to deadpan, but sardonic humor is hard to pull off if you're beaming like you've won the lottery and you've got the love of your life in your arms, even if she is currently you.
> 
> "Well, yeah, you're a twiggy model. But also I can deadlift Kim." ]
> 
> ["Marinette, we need to find a way to switch back as soon as possible."
> 
> "So you can kiss me?" she asked, a strange mix of Marinette-shy and Ladybug-sly.
> 
> "Yes," Adrien said earnestly, and then just as earnestly, " and because I need to pee."]


End file.
